z. their support from the country which they had deserted. The two heads which he adverted to would altogether diminish the supply of Great Britain by the amount of half a million, while the duties on articles of consumption imported into Ireland, and the produce of the hearth and other duties, which he was prepared to contend we could not, if we introduced, or rather attempted to introduce, the taxes paid in Great Britain, any longer retain, would shew that one million per annum of this expected revenue which was to flow into the imperial treasury, was not in fact any addition or increase to the general resources of the state.

"He wished to apply these illustra tions not against any measure which others might recommend, nor wishing to conceal from himself nor from the House the efforts he should in future years be called upon to make. But he advised the sanguine calculators of increased revenue, who, be it observed, were not those persons best acquainted with the means or circumstances of Ireland, to pause before they jumped to their conclusion, and to bear in recollection, that all that might be added to a financial statement was not necessarily added to the revenue of Ireland, or to the general receipt and income of the empire. With respect to the contribution of Ireland of sixteen millions and a half, he, who had to propose measures to parliament to provide for it, could not but contemplate with apprehension such an increase; but, aware, as he must be, of the difficulties which it imposed upon himself, and not disguising from the committee what the pressure of it must ultimate ly be, it would still be unfair to draw any comparison from the last and the present year of extended military operations and increased expenditure in every part of the world, which had occasioned to us so heavy a charge. He would not advert to what that calcu

lation at the time of the union might have been; the political circumstances which had since occurred could not then have been contemplated by any statesman; but this he would say, that unless the circumstances of the country were exceedingly altered, unless there was a diminution of our expenditure, it was impossible for Ireland to go on at this rate of contribution. Parliament ought not to deceive itself, at least he would not lend himself to the deception. Did any man suppose that a country, the annual revenue of which was only five millions, could go on raising 16 millions per annum? Ireland must borrow to pay this contribution, and he who hoped that she could supply the rest with war-taxes, as in Great Britain, or by supplies raised to any great extent within the year, must be ignorant indeed of the circumstances of the country for which he was undertaking to legislate. He at least would, until every other means of supply were exhausted, warn par liament against what, even in a financial point of view, would be deemed fatal to the growing wealth, and to that which could not grow without wealth, the future productive revenue of the country-and he spoke of a country, of the state of which, limited as his official experience had been, he was yet not uninformed. The exertions of Ireland had been great.-Great Britain was to raise in the present year twelve hundred thousand pounds by new taxes

Ireland was called upon to provide more than half that sum by new duties

Ireland, a country bearing no comparison in point of natural or improved resources. In the year 1785, when Mr Pitt proposed new taxes to the amount of 900,000l. per annum, it was deemed after the duration of the American contest, and the exhaustation of the national means, the greatest effort which any country had ever made to redeem the public difficulties. Yet

in less than 30 years, after a war of more protracted length, of at least undiminished sacrifice, and increased expence, Ireland, the whole of whose annual income at that time did not exceed the duties that the British parliament then imposed, has undertaken to provide six hundred thousand pounds, being in the last two years a contribution of fresh taxes, more than her whole income amounted to at the time that the commercial propositions were discussed. Let me not then be told that Ireland withholds herself in this instance, or that those who are responsible as her ministers endeavour to obtain for her a partial remission, which England has not received. We are making fair, and great, and generous exertions in the cause of Great Britain, a cause in the support of which we are not only pledged by compact, but which our country is, I admit, bound to combat for by every principle of mutual interest and of Common safety. If that part of the

united kingdom is not called upon to struggle beyond her strength, if her

means are not outrun, trust me she will yet prove to the empire a source of supply and of succour, such as the most sanguine mind has not perhaps contemplated. Do not attempt to anticipate too rashly her growing pow ers; if you anticipate you crush them. I wish my right hon. friends may feel with me. Whether I or another may next year fill that situation which now I have the honour to hold, I know not; but the legislature will, I hope, act upon the same principles; and I am confident that Great Britain will yet find in our increasing population, in the improved fertility of our soil, in our extended industry and augmented means, that Ireland will, in point of contribution, be enabled to make not less exertions than in other respects she has already done, or than the empire already owes to the loyalty, the hardihood, and the valour of her ple."

peo

THE unfortunate differences which had for some years subsisted betwixt the Prince and Princess of Wales had ceased to attract the notice of the public, until, on the 14th of January in this year, her Royal Highness was advised to address a letter to the Prince Regent, which speedily found its way into the public prints. The letter was, by command of her Royal Highness, transmitted by Lady Charlotte Campbell to the Lord Chancellor and the Earl of Liverpool, with a request that it might be laid before the Prince Regent. It was returned the next day by the Earl of Liverpool to Lady Charlotte Campbell, with an intimation, that as all correspondence had ceased for some years, it was his Royal Highness's determination not to renew it. The letter was again sent by the Princess, with an intimation that it contained matter of importance to the state; but was once more returned unopened Some further correspondence took place on the subject, which it is of no importance to recapitulate.

The persons who had advised the Princess to this measure determined on another and more decided step-the

publication of this letter; in which her Royal Highness stated, that it was with great reluctance she obtruded upon the Regent to solicit his attention to matters which might at first appear rather of a personal than a public nature. That if she could think them so-if they related merely to herself-she should abstain from proceedings which might give uneasiness, or interrupt the more weighty occupations of his Royal Highness. She should continue, in silence and retirement, to lead the life which had been prescribed to her, and console herself for the loss of that society, and those domestic comforts to which she had so long been a stranger, by the reflection, that it had been deemed proper she should be afflicted without any fault of her own. But there were considerations, she observed, of a higher nature than any regard to her own happiness, which rendered this address a duty to herself and to her daughter, as well as to her husband and the people committed to his care.-There was a point beyond which a guiltless woman could not with safety carry her forbearance. If her honour is invaded, the defence of her reputation is

no longer a matter of choice; and it signifies not whether the attack be made openly, manfully, and directly, or by secret insinuation, and by hold ing such conduct towards her as countenances all the suspicions that malice can suggest. If these ought to be the feelings of every woman in England who is conscious she deserves no reproach, his Royal Highness had too sound a judgment, and too nice a sense of honour, not to perceive how much more justly they belonged to the mother of his daughter-the mother of her who is destined to reign over the British empire. That during the continuance of the restrictions upon his royal authority, she purposely refrained from making any representations which might then augment the painful difficulties of his Royal Highness's exalted station. At the expiration of the restrictions she still was inclined to delay taking this step, in the hope that she might owe the redress she sought to his gracious and unsolicited condescension. She had waited in the fond indulgence of this expectation, until to her inexpressible mortification, she found that her unwillingness to complain had only pro. duced fresh grounds of complaint; and she was at length compelled either to abandon all regard for the two dearest objects which she possessed on earth, her own honour, and her beloved child, or to throw herself at the feet of his Royal Highness as the natural protector of both. That the separation which every succeeding month was making wider, of the mother and the daughter, was equally injurious to both. To see herself cut off from one of the very few domestic enjoyments left her-certainly the only one on which she set any value, the society of her child-involved her in such misery as she well knew his Roy al Highness could never inflict upon her if he were aware of its bitterness.

Their intercourse had been gradually diminished. A single interview, weekly, seemed sufficiently hard allowance for a mother's affections. That, however, was reduced to a meeting once a fortnight; and she had recently. learned that even this most rigorous interdiction was to be still more ri. gorously enforced.-But while she did not venture to intrude her feelings as a mother upon his Royal Highness's notice, she must be allowed to say, that in the eyes of an observing and jealous world, this separation of a daughter from her mother would only admit of one construction-a construc tion fatal to the mother's reputation. That there was no less inconsistency than injustice in this treatment. That he who dared advise his Royal Highness to overlook the evidence of her innocence, and disregard the sentence of complete acquittal which it produced, or was wicked and base enough still to whisper suspicions, betrayed his duty to his Royal Highness, to his daughter, and to his people, if he counselled him to permit a day to pass without a further investigation of her conduct. That no such ca. lumniator would venture to recommend a measure which must speedily end in his utter confusion. Thus without the shadow of a charge a gainst her-without even an accuser

after an enquiry that led to her ample vindication-she was yet treated as if she were still more culpable than the perjuries of her suborned traducers represented her, and held up to the world as a mother who might not enjoy the society of her only child.That the serious, the irreparable injury which her daughter sustained from the plan thus pursued, had done more in overcoming her reluctance to intrude upon his Royal Highness, than any sufferings of her own could ac complish. The powers with which the constitution vests his Royal High

ness in the regulation of the royal family, were admitted to be ample and unquestionable. Her appeal was made to his excellent sense and liberality of mind in the exercise of these powers and she willingly hoped that his paternal feelings would lead him to excuse her anxiety in representing the unhappy consequences which the present system must entail upon her beloved child. That the character of the Princess Charlotte would be injured by the perpetual violence offered to her strongest affections-by the studied care taken to estrange her from the society of her mother, and even to interrupt all communication between them. That all attempts to abate her attachment by forcibly separating the parent and child, if they succeeded, must injure her child's principles-if they failed, must destroy her happiness. The plan also of excluding her daughter from all intercourse with the world, appeared to her humble judgment peculiarly unfortunate. She who is destined to be the sovereign of this great country enjoyed none of those advantages of society which are deemed necessary for imparting a knowledge of mankind to persons who have infinitely less occasion to learn that important lesson : and it might so happen, that she should be called upon to exercise the powers of government, with an experience of the world more confined than that of the most private individual. To the extraordinary talents with which she is blessed, and which accompany a disposition singularly amiable, frank, and decided, much might be trusted; but beyond a certain point the greatest natural endowments cannot struggle against the disadvantages of circumstances and situation. Those who advised his Royal Highness to delay so long the period of her daughter's commencing her intercourse with the world, and for that purpose to make

Windsor her residence, appeared not to have regarded the interruptions to her education which this arrangement occasioned, both by the impossibility of obtaining the attendance of proper teachers, and the time unavoidably consumed in the frequent journies to town which she must make, unless she were secluded from all intercourse, even with his Royal Highness and the rest of the royal family. That his daughter had never yet enjoyed the benefit of confirmation, although above a year beyond the age at which all the other branches of the royal family have partaken of that solemnity.-Her Royal Highness concluded by expressing the extreme reluctance with which she had taken this important step.

No sooner was this letter laid before the public, than it became the subject of eager and angry discussion. While many approved of the letter in all its parts, and of the conduct which hr Royal Highness had been persuaded to follow, there were others who seemed to entertain very different sentiments.-It was remarked, that many of the complaints made in the letter were extremely frivolous. The Prince and Princess, it is true, live separately, on the worst terms. This state of things can only have arisen, it was said, from causes which the Prince deems sufficient; and were he to give up the government of his child to a person whose conduct he himself impeaches, he would thus confess himself to be highly criminal in living in a state of separation from her mother. Now it is better that his Royal Highness should commit an error under an impression that he is acting rightly, than that he should persevere in misconduct avowedly and deliberately. The most amiable may err, the most profligate alone can persist in acknowledged guilt.-As to the education of the Princess, the letter observed, that at Windsor masters were